Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Western Australian illustrator Shaun Tan has picked up a host of awards for his work, most recently overnight he picked up the New South Wales Premier's Book of the Year award for the haunting The Arrival, and also two gongs at the Aurealis Awards. As he prepared to put some young artists through their paces at the Sydney Writers Festival, he offered Articulate a fascinating insight into the creative process.

Australian writer Margo Lanagan is best known for her short stories, with collection Black Juice winning two World Fantasy Awards and "A Fine Magic" picking up an Aurealis Award. Her latest collection, Red Spikes, has been nominated for a Children's Book Council of Australia award. However, she has also turned her hand to novel-writing, with The Singing Stones coming out soon as part of The Lost Shimmaron series, and "most of a draft" of another longer-form work in the pipeline. Lanagan spoke to Articulate ahead of the Sydney Writers Festival.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Prolific Adelaide-based science fiction writer Sean Williams kicked off his career contracted to write nine books in two and a half years, and hasn't slowed down since. He's taking a break from his "gothic noir space opera" series Astropolis, novelisation of a Star Wars game and a series of dark fantasy novels for kids to take part in a packed schedule at the Sydney Writers Festival. In the lead-up to the festival, Williams found a slot in his hectic schedule to correspond with Articulate.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Matthew Reilly has likened his novels to big budget Hollywood action movies, without the budget restrictions. The Sydney-based author is set to get a taste of Hollywood himself, when he moves to the US later this year to work on a TV pilot. Meanwhile, the film adaptation of Hover Car Racer is crawling through the works at Disney. As Reilly prepared for his Sydney Writers Festival duties, Articulate asked him about his plans for Jack West Jr and Shane Schofield, breaking readers' expectations, and dealing with the critics.